TechFlow reported, according to News.bitcoin, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced that 12 defendants have been sentenced for participating in a series of violent home invasions aimed at stealing cryptocurrency.
Remy Ra St Felix from West Palm Beach, Florida, who led the operation, was sentenced to 47 years in prison. The crimes involved the theft of over $3.5 million in digital assets. Those sentenced include multiple individuals responsible for planning and carrying out the robberies, which spanned across several states.
According to court records, St Felix and his accomplices used SIM swapping to gain control of victims’ phone numbers, thereby accessing cryptocurrency accounts. After gaining access, they conducted home invasions, binding victims and threatening them with firearms to obtain computers and credentials for cryptocurrency trading accounts, ultimately stealing the digital assets. The DOJ added: "Conspirators laundered the proceeds using privacy-enhanced cryptocurrencies, as well as 'instant exchanges' and non-KYC decentralized exchanges (DEXs)."
The main co-conspirator, Seemungal, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $4,038,479.39 in restitution. Seemungal pleaded guilty on December 19, 2023, to charges of stealing cryptocurrency through hacking victims’ cryptocurrency accounts and committing armed home invasions. A total of nine accomplices were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for conspiracy to commit kidnapping, while other key participants were punished for their roles in the scheme.
